Jane Fishman: Margie takes trip to market to feed body, soul

Jane Fishman

Saturday

Jul 27, 2013 at 10:00 PM

Margie Standard pays attention to what she eats. She invested in an expensive blender, one she cleans studiously each time she uses it. She shops at the Forsyth Farmers' Market. She prefers to eat fresh food that's grown locally.

Sometimes she's not so lucky.

Margie's on food stamps, which works out well for her because, through a grant, the Forsyth market takes that amount and doubles it. But now and then she spends her allotted amount before the 20th of the month, which is when the next month's money gets transferred to her debit account.

"Then I go to Kroger's, like I did today," she said, smiling, sitting in her breezy living room on the seventh floor of Chatham Apartments. "And that's OK. Right now I'm drinking a blend of kale, carrots, cucumber, cilantro and celery and it's good, but really I think the more 'alive' the food is - the sooner you get it from the ground - the better it goes down. I really think I can feel the difference. Maybe it's just psychological, but I'll take it. However you look at it, I'm taking control of my life."

She wasn't always able to take such control of her life. As a child she was sexually abused by a series of men in her life, memories she managed to repress until she was 21. Then it all came flooding back.

"Believe it or not I was watching Oprah," she said.

When she tried telling her husband what she was feeling, she remembers him saying, "Just forget it even happened. What's for dinner?"

But she couldn't forget it. PTSD set it. So did bi-polar behavior, attempted suicide, abrupt decisions to get on her motorcycle and run away, periodic estrangement from her children and family.

"Bad decisions," she said. "Admitting my disability? That was hard."

But after every episode she'd seek help. She credits NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, AA, her community at Unity Church, good food and her 6-year-old dachshund, Oscar.

"He's a therapy dog, for sure," she said. "He's got to get out and walk so I have to get out and walk."

She also likes the community feel of Chatham Apartments. The Housing Authority subsidizes most of the building.

"It's a funny thing but I remember being released from the hospital once from one of my bouts and I told them I didn't want to leave," she said. "There were people around I could talk to. I feel the same way here."

It was the negative effects of the medication she takes for bi-polar and PTSD that turned her on to the benefits of good, chemical-free food. That and a series of documentaries she watched about the way most of our food is produced. Now she doesn't feel so sluggish and is not so slavish to sugar.

Last year she spent 10 days at a silent-only Buddhist retreat in Jesup.

Sometime before that, she and her mother, both high school dropouts, got their GED together. She's straightforward about her life.

"I've decided to be open," she said. "If my life's been through hell, maybe this will help someone else. It's the secrets that get you."

She knows she's eating healthy because when she goes to donate blood - which she likes to do regularly because "it's the right thing to do and it's good karma" - they check her iron and blood pressure levels.

Once she listed the jobs she's held. The number approached 100. She says she doesn't have trouble getting a job. She's been a tour guide in downtown Savannah, a certified welder, a framer, a concrete truck driver, a nursing assistant, a waitress. But until she found the right combination of medicines she did have trouble keeping a job.

For years she's volunteered with the Red Cross disaster relief contingency. After Hurricane Sandy she went with a group to serve food from the inside of an ambulance that had been retrofitted.

Now, in between part-time jobs, she has a few new passions. First, she's determined to get some of her neighbors to try her blended fruit and vegetable drinks.

"They look at it and say, 'Oh, it's so green!'"

Then she wants Chatham Apartments to start growing food on the building's flat room.

"It'd be perfect," she said. "Maybe the city can take some of that money they were going to spend on the cruise ships and help us out."